By accident I stumbled upon @EricShulman’s TiddlyTools Browser.
It’s super useful if you need to iframe other sites.
It has fantastic bookmarking.
I am looking into stopping user browser bookmarks by using the TiddlyTools browser method because it is completely portable between browsers.
Maybe later I have a few questions. Right now I really like it and am trying it.
TT
Oh yeah thanks for alerting me to this, this is really cool!
Here’s a more direct link: TiddlyTools/Panels/Browser.
Also, there’s a few “helper” tiddlers:
module-type with value=startup, then save-and-reload to take effect-e
In TiddlyWiki, even in general terms, embedding a site via an iframe is indeed super useful. My most used embed is WordHippo.
Be aware, though, not all site allow you to do this.
I have a few questions. I’ll post them one-by-one so it does’t get too complicated.
Q1: Am I right in thinking that the “history navigation” i.e …
Is limited to the current web site loaded in the iframe?
That a previous bookmark loaded web site would not be?
What I mean is that when you load a website it’s the same nav behaviour as if you’d opened a fresh window?
Hope this is clear!
TT
Q2: Is it okay to have more than one instance of the miniBrowser open?
In tests I just used …
<<showPanel>>
… in a Tiddler to get a new instance and it seemed to work fine.
TT
Q3: is there a way that the Aspect Ratio (currently, I think, hard-coded at 16/9) could be set via a separate CSS Tiddler?
Why: (i) different screens I use have differing aspect ratios; (ii) sometimes it would be useful have a mini-browser that is taller than it is wide.
Q4: similarly, how might I externalize the css setting of the zoom/scale?
Why: I’m thinking that I might try have it sometimes run at full-screen (same window) but would ideally re-scale the text to normal.
Tx for a great utility!
TT
Q5: does/can the iframe of the miniBrowser have a “name=”?
e.g. …
name="tt-browse"
That would allow?? The miniBrowser (when open) to accept any “<a>” link that has the name value as it’s target.
If miniBrowser wasn’t open the link would then, I think, open, as normal, in a new window.
TT
The “<” and “>” buttons simply invoke javascript window.frames.history.go(-1); and window.frames.history.go(1); respectively. The iframe history object itself (window.frames.history) is maintained and managed by the browser, so the behavior is outside my direct control.
What I’ve found is that, in Chrome, if you use TiddlyTools/Panels/Browser to visit “SiteA” and then navigate to pages within SiteA, then “<” and “>” work as expected (i.e., moving back/forward in the iframe’s page history). If you then use the TiddlyTools/Panels/Browser’s URL input to go to “SiteB” and navigate within SiteB, the same intra-site back/forward applies to SiteB, but does not permit you to use “<” to go back to SiteA. So, in that regard, it does behave as if you’d opened a fresh window.
One important note:
if you use the “<” button from the first page of an iframe’d site, instead of doing nothing, it applies the button press to the parent window (i.e., your open TiddlyWiki), resulting in an unwanted EXIT from your TiddlyWiki 
To address this, I’ve provided another bit of javascript, TiddlyTools/Panels/Browser/NoExit.js that hacks the parent window’s “history stack” to prevent the iframe’s “<” back button from leaving that parent window.
It is a “startup” module that is invoked once (when the parent window is first loaded) and defines exports.name = "spineless"; (i.e., “no back”). This module adds the current location.href to the history stack and sets window.onpopstate=function(){ history.forward(); }; so that attempts to move back past that location.href stack entry automatically moves forward again, effectively preventing you from unintentionally leaving the parent window.
Because TiddlyTools/Panels/Browser/NoExit.js is invoked as a startup module, it is always in effect even if you don’t actually use the TiddlyTools/Panels/Browser in the current session. However, this behavior might be unwanted. To address this, the NoExit.js tiddler has been published without the module-type=startup field, so it is NOT automatically invoked at startup. To enable the “no back” handling, you need to add the module-type field with a value of “startup” and then save-and-reload for it to be applied.
-e
Each instance of the miniBrowser uses <<qualify>> to create and track unique state values (url, name, and enabled) in $:/config/TiddlyTools/Browser. This effectively allows multiple instances of the miniBrowser to be used in the same document, as long as only one miniBrowser is rendered in each tiddler.
-e
re: custom aspect ratios (Q3) and zoom/scale values (Q4)…
Currently, these are hard-coded to “16/9” and “0.5”, respectively. In the past, I experimented with using different values but it turns out that controlling the rendering of iframe contents is very tricky and I was unable to produce the results I had expected. Nonetheless, the ability to apply custom aspect ratios and zoom/scale values are reasonable requests, so I will make another attempt to parameterize these values, but I’m not sure it will enable the kind of control you want.
-e
It does NOW 
The default is name="minibrowser", so you can write:
<a href="http://example.com" target="minibrowser">click me</a>
To assign a different name:
\import TiddlyTools/Panels/Browser
<<showPanel name:"somename">>
and then use
<a href="http://example.com" target="somename">click me</a>
enjoy,
-e
This is just a comment.
But to folk interested in the miniBrowser (and iframes for embedding external pages in general) it may be of help.
TW has simple, explicit, very economical, WikiText for external links in the full form of …
[ext[site name|https://www.site-url]]
A TW parser will silently, & cleverly, add things to protect you and direct the link to a new tab/window via target="_blank" … and the generated HTML code (modified for readability) is …
<a class="tc-tiddlylink-external"
href="https://www.site-url"
rel="noopener noreferrer"
target="_blank">site name
</a>
What you see is …
Okay so far.
But I want to have those links open in the TiddlyTools miniBrowser (or any iframe with a name=“value”).
How can I change the parser at $:/core/modules/parsers/wikiparser/rules/extlink.js to direct links to an iframe with a name that is not “_blank”?
(Relax: This is not “University Challenge”)
I surprised myself by changing one line in the parser from …
target: {type: "string", value: "_blank"},
… to …
target: {type: "string", value: "minibrowser"},
… and it worked (the miniBrowser has to be open. If it isn’t the link, usefully, goes too a new window/tab).
TT
That is really useful if one does a lot of embedding of external sites!!
Tx, TT
It turns out that I had ALMOST all the needed handling already, except for two things:
showPanel macro now accepts optional width and height parameters. You can use any CSS measurement values for width (default=100%) and height (default=50vh).enjoy,
-e
Another minor question …
Q6: Small CSS issue on the mini-browser control bar.
I sometimes use the mini-browser nearly full screen and get this small problem …
I couldn’t find a class that would let me move the button away from the sidebar left pointing chevron.
TT
Just comments …
The Bookmarking is fantastically flexible!
TT
I’ve just added a new “tt-browser-toolbar” class to the DIV that contains the toolbar. To shift the “enable/disable” button, You should be able to use something like this:
.tt-browser-toolbar { margin-right:2em; }
Let me know how it goes…
-e
I noticed that in your posted bookmarks snapshot you have a “Reference” folder with 45 items, which results in a scrollable bookmark list. While this allows you to scroll to your desired bookmark, it could get somewhat tedious if you always need to scroll the list just to open a bookmark that is further down.
To make bookmark access easier/faster, I’ve added a new TiddlyTools Browser “search bookmarks” toolbar button (using the TWCore’s “advanced search” button image) that lets you enter text to find matching bookmarks. The search input is case-insensitive and finds any matching text in bookmark names and bookmark URLs. The results are displayed as a “flat list” of bookmark items.
enjoy,
-e
